They Were Never Heard From Again
by Frozen In Flight
Summary: "And they were never heard from again." Chilling words. What if they were heard? Spoilers for end-game Vesperia. Three-shot. If Brave Vesperia couldn't match the strength of the former hero...
1. End Game

First off - Sorry to everyone who is waiting for something to update. I'm a horrible person, I know, but I'm also in college and having Duke as a muse seems to have created apathy. I'll get to work on things, slowly but surely. Probably more slowly. I do have quite a bit of note type things on my computer for most of those other ones - KHALY, Symphony of the Brightest Star, they have chapters written up for later, far later in some cases. I don't even remember what I was last working on in Host- actually, I just remembered because I thought about it. Hmmm.

Well, here's something I thought up. Will have one short chapter to follow it.

I own nothing, much to Duke's relief.

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><p>Estelle gave a weak cry as Duke flickered into place in the air above her, Dein Nomos slamming into the ground and creating a shockwave that made the pinkette princess crumple.<p>

"Damn it!" Raven swore, fishing in his pockets for a life bottle, and missed the war hero's return to the ground, and the shields that floated about him spiraling into a line. The floating man's statement as the pieces of metal fired was lost under Raven's cry as he too crumpled.

"No!" Rita quickly jumped into the air, activating a formula nearly identical to the one Duke used, quickly beginning to flick her scarf through the air. "Oh countless particles that wander the very heavens-" While Yuri scrambled for a life bottle, he heard Duke match Rita for casting. However, the pale man's chant was far shorter.

"I now unleash the full force of my life!" Yuri hated to dive away while Rita could not, but if he was left standing then he could revive the others. "_Guilty Resolver_!" Yuri gritted his teeth as Rita fell from the air, her body crashing into the ground.

"Damn it! Damn it!" He heard Karol yelp, Repede bark, Judith shout, and kept moving.

"_Luna Rondo_!"

"_Destruction Street!_"

He heard them go down just as fast. There! A life bottle. Yuri turned and booked it for Estelle, only to skid to a halt when Duke appeared before him, as if he had just slid into place.

"_Dragon Swarm_!" He clipped one of the shields, but completely missed the hero, spinning past him.

"_Dragon Ascendant!_" And Dein Nomos slammed into him, wreathed in flame.

"Screwed up." Yuri grunted, hitting the ground. Darkness hovered about the edge of his vision but didn't completely steal it away. The bright glow from Duke might have had something to do with that.

"'And they were never heard from again.'" The glow dimmed as Duke stated this, almost musingly, as if tasting the words. "Although, there will be none left to have heard of you..." The sounds of Duke's boots hitting the floor created by the spell he had unleashed while absorbing Aer. "...You were far more foolhardy than your plan..." A pair of steps, then the world was falling. Duke's boots moved right past his face, stepping over Estelle as the brick garden returned to below them. Pale blue light and faint chirping indicated that Duke had pulled his formula back into existence. "Perhaps it is for the best..." Calm footsteps. Surely Duke realized they weren't dead? Or did he simply not care, because they were incapacitated? "Humanity would not take well to the change you would impose upon them. It is better for them to simply disappear."

"Dammit.." That was Raven, grunting as he tried to keep awake, the old man grimacing at the ground and his lack of strength. "Yer.. givin' up, on everythin'?" The archer's fingers missed the pale man's boot as he walked past, altering a symbol or two there, stepping over the purple coated man to another point and writing symbols into a blank location that appeared.

"There was very little left for me to give up." Duke states, indicating just how little he felt for his own kind.

"Khroma... didn't want to see you do this." Judith tells him, watching as he moved to a new point and altered his formula. "Take revenge on your own kind."

"Such frail ties..." Duke murmurs, removing a symbol and adding a new one. "As I had told you then, I do not hold that bond as common race to be of any importance. Terca Lumireis is better off without humanity and all their foolish whims."

"You don't care? That you're giving up your life?" Estelle struggles to turn her head to watch him.

"Child of the Full Moon..." Duke stops where his boots are in her vision. "I had thought you, with your words to Phaeroh, would be more likely to understand." He turned from her, altering the formula again. "What do you need..." Dein Nomos returned to the man's hand as he rested the other on the glowing wall that represented his formula.

"Duke... stop!" Rita glares at him. "Just try our way, please, it will work!"

"You risked your life and plan in a gamble against my own and failed." Duke states, stripping a glove off and calmly dropping it while examining his palm. "I have no interest in testing your cause when your strength, your conviction, was not enough to best mine." Dein Nomos' edge was casually pressed against his palm, the hand closing then opening again. Blood stained finger traced a symbol, then studied the formula. "

There." The chirping slowly crescendos, and Duke stepped away from his walls. "Farewell, Brave Vesperia." Light faded and grew and washed out the world.

And Yuri woke cold.


	2. Nobody Knows

So I'm adding a second part after this. It's not going to be very long, or very in depth.

Disclaimer on the first chapter.

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><p><em>"Farewell, Brave Vesperia." Light faded and grew and washed out the world.<em>

And Yuri woke cold.

He blinked at the unmarred sky above him, then wriggled his toes. Those were cold too. And here he thought hell was supposed to be a warm place. A groan told him he wasn't alone, and he turned his head. Estelle lay a handful of feet in that direction, the old man was groaning into the stone nearby. A tangle of white past him.

"This isn't right." Yuri frowned, rolling over. The rest of the guild was there, in the stone floored garden with its crystals and running water.

"Y-Yuri?" Estelle stirs, then quickly looks left and right. "But, I thought-"

"The formula activated." Rita states, sitting up slowly. "And it worked. The Adephagos is gone, but then why...?"

"Was this place protected from it?" Karol asks, looking about. Estelle gets up, and quickly eats a gel, then heads over and kneels next to Duke.

"... No." She sits back on her heels. "Duke's dead."

"Then there wasn't a protective formula..." Rita frowns.

"Then the spirits protected us from the formula, even at this close range." Judith decides, and cups a hand next to her ear.

"But, that means..." Estelle stands, looking about.

"If his formula worked, we're the last five humans on Terca Lumireis." Yuri frowns at the pale man, then looked to Judith. "You think he got the Kritya too?"

"Khrones says that Myorzo is unchanged." The lancer drops her hand, looking serious at them. "Ba'ul says that no one runs or stares at him when he flies over Halure, or Deidon Hold."

"Should we..." Estelle looked at Rita, who held up Vesperia No.1 questioningly.

"We can still get rid of all the Blastia. Convert them to spirits. Even if there's not Adephagos to kill."

"..." Yuri stared at the lifeless form of Duke, then the starry sky. "I'd like to say we should go through with our plan, even if there's no one left to save... But would we be able to protect ourselves from monsters without barriers and magic, now that we don't have numbers?" Everyone stared at him, silently solemn. "... Let's get off Tarqaron first."

Ba'ul took them to Halure, and the town was silent. Then they realized the spell had a side effect – Every human lost their life on Terca Lumireis, where they were standing, sitting, sleeping. Which meant there were bodies in the streets, slumped against walls and wells and inn desks.

"... I don't think we have enough people to bury them all." Yuri frowns, looking about. "Unless we recruit Myorzo's Kritya."

"I don't want to leave them for the monsters." Estelle insists, frowning.

"Well, we failed them." Raven shrugged slowly. "I'm sure Rita has enough fire to help us send them off."

So they spent the day collecting bodies from Halure. And the next, and the next. They managed to get most of them out of the city before they started smelling too bad, and the young mage _Crimson Flare_'d them at dusk.

They went through the stored food next, burying those that were not salvageable and hoarding everything else. None of them knew anything, well, Estelle had _read_ about farming, but most of their vegetables and fruit had been bought or found on monsters. Some things, like apples and oranges, peaches and bananas, seemed simple enough. They came off trees, after all. Brave Vesperia could get their meet off of monsters, when the supply of that ran out.

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><p>"Hello." Yuri looked across the curious Kritya. He'd meant to just talk to the elder, but then more had wandered by and stopped to listen. "We failed. Sorry about that. There are no humans other than us left. Pretty sure you might have already known that." Curious mutters. He'd noticed that there were no Kritya bodies in Halure, at least, and no live Kritya either. Khrones might be a flying jellyfish, but the Kritya were his? its? and likely gathered up again. Some Kritya nodded to the confirmation requesting murmurs of their fellows. Kritya from the now empty cities. "We're going to turn off the barrier Blastia for the cities other than Halure, so if you wait a while, or don't mind cleaning up bodies, there are pre-made cities waiting below."<p>

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't want to hand a world to die in off to a kid." Yuri shrugs. "Rita said something about gene pool and all sorts of stuff that basically says that we can't bring humans back with five of us. So we're going to live. And after we grow old, the world will end up the way Duke wanted it to be, a world ruled by Entelexeia, inhabited by Kritya and monsters, no humans to mess it up for everything else."

"I see." The Elder _hrmmmm_ed for a moment. "If you need supplies you can't get on the surface, young Judith knows how to find us."

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><p>And so one by one, Brave Vesperia traveled the cities of Terca Lumireis and extinguished the Barriers. They gave Tokunaga a burial-at-sea, off the edge of the Fiertia that they landed in the water for a time.<p>

The lower Quarter residents almost got individual graves, but they didn't have the time to fight rot and decay to dig them all separate ones. Hanks and Ted got their own, the child's pitifully small, the rest of the lower quarter a mass grave, and the other residents were left for the monsters as they dispelled the Barrier.

Yuri dug another grave in Aurnion, burying his best friend in the city he had built, and Estelle did her best to bury her cousin, although they ended up helping the princess, and Raven worked on graves for his Brigade lieutenants.

Nordopolica, they gave Natz a fireball on a boat at sea.

Mantaic, the bodies had already started to decompose in the heat. They burned them as best they could, with minimal structure damage. Also helped that the buildings were of stone.

The Hunting Blades weren't in Dahngrest, but Harry was, and they buried him near where the Don.

Kaufman and her bodyguard were buried outside Torim.

Pauly and his parents outside Nor.

Zaphias, Nordopolica, Mantaic, Dahngrest, Heliord, Torim, Nor, they completed their circuit after putting up a stone next to Elucifur's on Ehmead Hill for Duke, despite the world he'd left them to die in.

And so the last five humans settled in Halure, under the last barrier in Terca Lumireis.


	3. Journey's End

Last one. A little disjointed, I couldn't get inspiration and left ends untied. I might go back and edit the chapter later, should I get inspiration for parts, but...

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><p>Life was.. more or less normal. They could pretend they weren't in Halure, and were in an house in the woods, pretend the silence but for their own noises was completely natural.<p>

Except when Yuri would stare off into space with absolutely nothing on his face or in his grey eyes and Repede would wander over, slowly, and nuzzle the man back into reality. They would pretend they didn't notice that he'd go out when it rained and stand there, face to the sky to let it cry for him. He was still all smirks and teases, the loudest laugher when Karol's voice broke and when Rita continued to have problems with Repede trying to give her occasional affection, except when he'd stare south at and past where Zaphias was. They pretended not to notice the pauses where the dark swordsman missed his light counterpart, his friends and more or less family of the Lower Quarter, but Brave Vesperia still interrupted them when they'd gone on for long enough.

Estelle did take up writing, but perhaps not in the way she had thought. She did chronicle their adventures in the form of a fairy tale, but she also set to writing about what had happened to the humans. In Terca Lumireian on paper and then on stone, she sought to break the cycle Duke had described, should humans ever return to Terca Lumireis or Kritya think of repeating the problem. Mostly it was something to do.

Rita spoke with the spirits, talked to Ba'ul through Judith, or Khrones via the Krityan lancer, and understood what she'd done. She refined and studied her magic, figured out how to use it to aid plants and what not instead of just being a combat caster.

Raven continued to mesh his more responsible Schwann side with his more friendly Raven, falling into a cheerful-ish father figure for the handful of humans left. Didn't stop him from occasionally getting wasted.

Judith remained calm smiles and gentle teasing, and someone to cry against.

Karol flipped from brave young leader to lost child and back again, crying in corners when he didn't want to show his tears, learning to fight better from Yuri, Raven and Judith, using his knowledge of monsters to help them hunt and crying himself to sleep at night when he thought no one was listening.

Repede was the first to die.

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><p>It didn't really surprise anyone, dogs don't live as long as humans, simple as that. The blue and white hound had slowly grown greyer, his blue dimming as Karol and Rita shot up, as Yuri was torn between copying his passed on friends hair style and keeping the long hair that bothered him so untamed, as their clothes patched and were remade with clumsy hands and no knowledge of sewing until they simply raided dressers. He spent less time chasing lanky Karol and more time in the sun, less time fighting monsters for that month's worth of meat and more time quietly accepting ear scratches from any who would offer it.<p>

Until one day he limped over to Yuri's feet while the dark haired man sat studying his orchard of sorts, and flopped against him with a whine.

"Hm?" Yuri blinked down, casual smirk-smile fixed on his face like usual, only for it to crack and fall into the blankness that all of Brave Vesperia knew was underneath. "...Repede?"

Karol got too deep into a monster nest on a hunt, and his _Nice Healing Smash_ wasn't enough to save him.

Raven's heart slowly wore out, his life draining away due to arte usage and age.

An experiment of Rita's burned her so severely that Estelle's Artes couldn't help, and rather than live in pain she let go, a cranky apology and promise to wait. And that they'd better take their damn time.

And Yuri and Estelle did. Judith came and went, cheering them up, leading hunts, taking them on flights, but the Kritya were different in many ways. She remained younger, while both of them aged steadily.

While a grey-pink haired middle-aged lady, Estelle caught sick. Yuri had no Artes to help, and she could only give so many directions, instructions, before coughing hard enough to shake her to pieces.

"Sorry, Judy." Yuri mutters, settling Estelle against the base of Halure's tree, and plunking himself down beside her. "Leaving a mess for you to clean up, but I'd rather not be the last human, alone, for very long."

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><p><em>Long ago, the ancient Geraios Civilization brought Blastia into being on our world of Terca Lumireis. These Blastia used Aer to make life easy, allowed magic and sanctuary from monsters. However, they also tainted the Aer, and the taint grew large enough to draw in a cataclysm. <em>

_They called it the Adephagos._

_All of Terca Lumireis united to challenge the Adephagos. The Kritya, Humans and Entelexeia together drove it back. However, this came at the cost of the lives of those known as the Children of the Full Moon, who held power within them like a Blastia. The Children of the Full Moon willingly sacrificed their lives and created the Ever Enduring Shrine of Zaude, and Brave Vesperia, a barrier Blastia of strength unrivaled, holding the Adephagos back further._

_However, by the next thousand years, these truths were forgotten and Blastia were being excavated and put to use by all humans, the tale of the Adephagos shorted and warped into a fairy tale. The Entelexeia knew of the danger but did not speak with the humans, descending with the intent to destroy the most wasteful of them. This sparked conflicts, and eventually a great war. A great many lives were lost, on both sides, but humans emerged victorious due to one man and his Entelexeia friend. Ten years after that, the human governments of the Empire and the Union of Guilds were nearly destroyed, and the Adephagos had returned due to a great man's folly. He mistook Zaude for a weapon rather than a shield, and the Adephagos was able to return._

_Two plans rose from the masses of humanity. One man sought to end the Adephagos by removing those who would use Blastia, and a group sought to do the same by removing Blastia. It was a race of sorts, the great war hero, embittered by the betrayal of humans that cost his friend's life, did not need to ask the rest of humanity whether they would accept his plan, as he was going to remove all human life in exchange for destroying the Adephagos. The other group, a small guild named Brave Vesperia after the star-that-was-not, made their plan to convert Aer into another force, to remove all the Blastia, and traveled our Terca Lumireis for approval of the world's leaders. _

_The two plans met on the Ancient Tower of Tarqaron, the base of the war hero's formula to end humans, and fought._

_He won._

Right here, the book changes handwriting. While before the author's hand was neat and precise, another hand takes over. One rougher and a bit sloppy. _And when it's said that 'he won', that means that he was fought until he had no magic left, then he gathered more and wiped the floor with Brave Vesperia._

The neat writing returns, although it starts off with a harsher look as if the author was irritated. _And thus, within a handful of minutes, the world lost its human population. Brave Vesperia was accidentally spared, the components of their plan protecting them from the great war hero's formula._

_Please, do not repeat our mistakes. Do not use Blastia. _

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><p>... yeah.<em><br>_


End file.
